Undisputed Lightweight champion Devin Haney (29-0, 15 KO’s) sparked controversy by leaking a (approximately) three-minute sparring video where he is seemingly gaining the upperhand over Hector Garcia (16-0, 10 KO’s). The video comes off the back of an interview Haney held with the Thaboxingvoice where he expressed that Garcia was kicked out of his camp (for his fight with Joseph Diaz) in 2018 because “he couldn’t last”.
“I sparred him. He’s a tune up.” Haney said decisively when asked on the perception of Hector Garcia being a tune-up for Gervonta Davis (27-0, 25 KO’s). “I kicked him out of camp, he got kicked out of camp because he couldn’t last.
“I sparred him for the JoJo Diaz fight. I think I sparred him like two times or three times, something like that, and he just couldn’t keep up, so I kicked him out and got somebody else.”
Both Hector Garcia and his trainer, Bob Santos, heavily contested Haney’s claims. On an interview with Fight Hub TV, Santos insinuated that Haney had fabricated his story surrounding Garcia’s departure of his training camp.
“He (Haney) talked about that we couldn’t push him in camp, and he needed get us out of the camp, now he’s saying “I never called him back” or I don’t know what all that is.” Santos said. “First he said we couldn’t push you, so we had to leave the camp. Then you said we never called back for the camp…”
Santos also highlighted his take on the sparring sessions between Haney and Garcia.
“Of the two sparring sessions, we’ve all seen the one round that they had. They have the full sparring sessions (videos) of both sparring sessions, and we never taped anything. So they have one round that they released of the two sparring sessions, and everybody can see it was an even-keel round, at best.” Santos said.
“When you bring a guy for sparring, if he’s absolutely atrocious, I can understand if you’d get rid of him. If you have him there and you think he’s a problem in the camp because he’s partying with the other guys, he’s a bad influence on the other guy, or there’s just bad people around… I don’t think that’s the case cause again, Hector only speaks Spanish. I don’t think they’re gonna hang out at the club, to my knowledge.
“And the third reason you’d get rid of a guy is (if) you think he’s just too much in the camp.”
Bob Santos also gave his view on the outcome of both sparring sessions.
“We had two different sparring sessions, the one round they showed was in the first sparring session, and then the second sparring session… obviously they never called us back after that second sparring session so, I mean, I’ll leave it to the people to determine what happened.” Santos said.
In a separate interview, Hector Garcia offered his own view on Haney having dismissed him from camp.
“Devin Haney never kicked me out of training camp, that’s the wrong way to go about it. He told me during our last sparring session (that) I made him look bad and I was seen as a problem in his gym, and that’s why I stepped out and left the gym.” Garcia responded to the question on what he experienced went down during his training camp with Devin Haney.
Hector Luis Garcia is set to fight Gervonta Davis on January 7th.
